The Banquet (Il Convito) eBook

That which most adorns and commends human actions,
and which most directly leads them to a good result,
is the use of dispositions best adapted to the end
in view; as the end aimed at in knighthood is courage
of mind and strength of body. And thus he who
is ordained to the service of others, ought to have
those dispositions which are suited to that end; as
submission, knowledge and obedience, without which
any one is unfit to serve well. Because if he
is not subject to each of these conditions, he proceeds
in his service always with fatigue and trouble, and
but seldom continues in it. If he is not obedient,
he never serves except as in his wisdom he thinks fit,
and when he wills; which is rather the service of
a friend than of a servant. Hence, to escape
this disorder, this commentary is fit, which is made
as a servant to the under-written Songs, in order to
be subject to these, and to each separate command
of theirs. It must be conscious of the wants
of its lord, and obedient to him, which dispositions
would be all wanting to it if it were a Latin servant,
not a native, since the songs are all in the language
of our people. For, in the first place, if it
had been a Latin servant he would be not a subject
but a sovereign, in nobility, in virtue, and in beauty;
in nobility, because the Latin is perpetual and incorruptible;
the language of the vulgar is unstable and corruptible.
Hence we see in the ancient writings of the Latin
Comedies and Tragedies that they cannot change, being
the same Latin that we now have; this happens not
with our native tongue, which, being home-made, changes
at pleasure. Hence we see in the cities of Italy,
if we will look carefully back fifty years from the
present time, many words to have become extinct, and
to have been born, and to have been altered. But
if a little time transforms them thus, a longer time
changes them more. So that I say that, if those
who departed from this life a thousand years ago should
come back to their cities, they would believe those
cities to be inhabited by a strange people, who speak
a tongue discordant from their own. On this subject
I will speak elsewhere more completely in a book which
I intend to write, God willing, on the “Language
of the People.”

Again, the Latin was not subject, but sovereign, through
virtue. Each thing has virtue in its nature,
which does that to which it is ordained; and the better
it does it so much the more virtue it has: hence
we call that man virtuous who lives a life contemplative
or active, doing that for which he is best fitted;
we ascribe his virtue to the horse that runs swiftly
and much, to which end he is ordained: we see
virtue of a sword that cuts through hard things well,
since it has been made to do so. Thus speech,
which is ordained to express human thought, has virtue
when it does that; and most virtue is in the speech
which does it most. Hence, forasmuch as the Latin
reveals many things conceived in the mind which the
vulgar tongue cannot express, even as those know who
have the use of either language, its virtue is far
greater than that of the vulgar tongue.